1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a printer driver, and a recording apparatus, and more particularly, to a printer driver of an information processing apparatus (e.g., host computer) capable of driving a recording apparatus (e.g., printer) with a limited printing buffer size.
2. Description of the Related Art
An ink jet recording apparatus of a serial type forms an image by moving a carriage having a recording head mounted thereon in a main scanning direction that is different from a paper feeding direction, and discharging inks from nozzles of the recording head.
Such recording apparatus typically includes a printing buffer (recording buffer) for holding recording data to be transferred to the recording head. As to a memory capacity of the printing buffer, an amount sufficient for holding all data to be recorded in at least one main scanning direction is typically provided (printing buffer of 1 band).
For example, when recording is carried out in an 8-inch width at resolution of 600 dpi in a main scanning direction and a recording head has 128 nozzles arranged at 600 dpi in a subscanning direction, a printing buffer necessary for one main scanning may require a memory capacity of 76800 bytes per color.
In order to realize high quality image, a multidroplet method is available. In the multidroplet method, plural amounts of each color ink are discharged while one kind of a discharge amount is conventionally permitted per color. Alternatively, a multicoloring method is available which adds photocyan (PC) and photomagenta (PM) to four basic colors of cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y) and black (K) to improve a gray scale of a photo-image. Accordingly, a memory capacity necessary for the recording apparatus tends to increase.
Moreover, in order to realize high speed printing, attempts have continuously been made to reduce the number of scanning times necessary for printing one page by increasing the number of nozzles of each color. This also tends to increase a memory capacity of the printing buffer.
An increase in printing buffer size leads to a cost increase of a printer. However, in association with an increase in number of host apparatus (host computers) put into a market and a reduction in its price, there has been a trend of a rapid price reduction of ink jet recording apparatus in the market. Especially, a price reduction has been conspicuous in a low-end ink jet recording apparatus. To realize the price reduction, attempts have been made to reduce a memory size of an ink jet printer (e.g., reduce a printing buffer size).
For example, there has been a proposal to reduce a printing buffer size by controlling main scanning to start before data input of one main scanning amount is completed in a buffer (JP A 11-259248). There has also been a proposal to carry out a recovery control when data transfer from a host apparatus to a recording apparatus is not in time because of an increase in processing load or the like caused by multitask processing of a CPU in the host apparatus (JP A 2003-305903).
As another example, control is carried out for mask compression in a host apparatus, and information used for the mask compression, and compressed and thinned (reduced) print data are transferred from the host apparatus to a recoding apparatus (i.e., a printer) (JP A 2003-159839).
In the case of JP A 2003-159839, mask pattern data, and compressed and thinned data are sent in one column, and a mask pattern is a 1-dimensional mask along a nozzle column. Additionally, the mask pattern is shorter than one nozzle column, and is repeated a plurality of times with respect to the number of data corresponding to one nozzle column, and thus the method may achieve a cost advantage. However, there may be a problem associated with the method disclosed in JP A 2003-159839 in that flexibility of the mask pattern may be decreased and image quality may be sacrificed.